Health care represents about 16% of the US economy and the percentage is increasing rapidly (some say it has already increased to 20%). The increase in the percentage is because the increase in health care costs exceeds the rate of inflation and many new costly procedures and pharmaceuticals are being developed all of the time. Many of these new products save lives or improve outcomes, but often increase the cost of treatment, although some of them actually decrease the overall cost of treatment by shortening the recovery time. The percentage of GDP spent of health care will increase unless there is Tort Reform. But there is no Tort Reform or any other cost saving proposals in ObamaCare. There are only tax increases that will actually increase the cost of health care.
Most economists agree that for a healthy economy, the Government’s taxes and expenses should not exceed 18% of GDP or at most 20%. Higher percentages lead to inflation, deficit spending and a weak currency. Government expenditures were at approximately 22% of GDP, before the February 2009 $787 billion stimulus or “porkulus” package, the phony 6 month pork packed extension of the ’08-’09 budget, and the largest in history pork packed ’09-’10 budget. In his first six months in office, Obama spent more money than every president before him from the first George W., George Washington to the last George W., George W. Bush. Of this money Obama spent, one dollar was borrowed for every two dollars that was spent. Adding the entire health care costs of 16% to 20% of GDP under Obama’s single payer system, together with the rest of the Government expenditures (including legitimate expenses, pork, waste, corruption and fraud), will cause the economy to collapse. We need to cut Government spending and cut taxes to grow the economy again.
If ObamaCare doesn’t bring down the economy by itself, Obama’s proposed Cap-and-Trade will. Obama’s Cap-and-Trade plan will cap and destroy our economy and trade our jobs to China and India. No economy could survive this massive tax and regulation on industrial production, energy production, food production, transportation and every other activity in life. Production and jobs will move to low cost and high polluting countries, such as China, India and Mexico. Since these countries are some of the biggest polluting countries in the world, pollution and the alleged “green house” gases will increase and not decrease, as the proponents of the bill claim, while destroying the US economy.
And, if ObamaCare and Cap-and-Trade do not bring the econ0my down, Card Check will. Card Check will take away the secret ballot from employees, when union thugs intimidate employees to sign union organizing cards, and will impose binding arbitration for union contracts, if the company being organized does not cave in quickly to the union’s demands. Who would Obama appoint to be an arbitrator? Van Jones? Why Van Jones, Obama’s former Communist Green Jobs Czar, is now available. He is currently sitting down the way from the White House at the Center for Americans for Progress, where he was promptly hired by Leon Pannetta the day after he “resigned.” The Center for Americans for Progress was funded by the Hungarian Communist George Soros.
Unions have been very detrimental to the economy. In addition to the UAW bringing down GM and Chrysler, almost every manufacturing job, which has been lost in the recent recession, was from a union company. Unions demand more pay, benefits and job restrictions, than the economic conditions and value of their output justifies. For example, the American automobile companies cannot even upgrade equipment or shut down a production line without the UAW’s permission. That is why these US automobile companies were often profitable outside the US, while they lost money in the US. These high demands on employers in a competitive economy, particularly during a recession, result in layoffs, business failures and manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas.
Thus, there is a growing body of evidence that the collapse of the US economy will be the result of Obama’s initiatives. Could that be his plan?
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Bullet Points on ObamaCare
• Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll for 9/25-26/09 on Obama’s health care plan: 56% Opposed, 41% Support. Only 16% of seniors support Obama’s health care plan.
• Poll Says 45% of Doctors Said That They Would Consider Quitting If ObamaCare Passes. An IBD/TIPP Poll found that 65% of doctors oppose the Government proposed health care plan and 45% said that they would consider quitting their practice or taking early retirement if it passes. See, Investor’s Business Daily (“IBD”), 9/16/2009, p. 1; search, www.ibdeditorials.com . The poll said that 71% of doctors do not believe that the Government can cover 47 million more people for less money and with better quality of care. There is nothing in any of the plans that will increase the number of doctors to handle the additional people covered. In fact, the Governments proposal will drive doctors out of practice. The biggest thing that will cut cost is tort reform. “Doctors’ Best Medical Cost-Cutting Ideas: Tort Reform, Tort Reform and Tort Reform,” IBD, 9/24/09, p. 1. But the plaintiff lawyers have bought the Democratic Party, so it won’t happen with Democrats in control.
• Obama’s Joint Session of Congress Speech. On September 9th, Obama gave an overly lengthy campaign speech to a Joint Session of Congress on “His” health care plan. However, Obama has not submitted a health care plan. Every time his statements began with “under my Plan,” his statements conflicted with HR 3200 and the other plans floating around Congress. “His Plan” must have been referring to the “Plan” on “His” teleprompter and on video tape. Now, since Obama changes what he says on a regular basis, no one can trust his “Teleprompter Plan.”
• Your Current Plan. Obama has consistently said, “If you like your current health insurance plan, you can keep it. No one will take it away from you.” There are several problems with this oft-repeated statement. Page 16 of HR 3200, says you can only keep your insurance if it was in effect on January 1 of the year in which this law is enacted. Therefore, if you switch jobs, you will not be able to get the insurance of your new employer, because your insurance would not have been in effect on January 1. Nor could you switch between different plans offered by your employer as your circumstances change. In these cases, you would be forced into the Government Plan.
• Medicare. According to HR 3200, Obama, Pelosi and Reid want to cut half a trillion dollars from Medicare. They want to take $500,000,000,000 from people who paid into the system for 30 or 40 years and who need it most, and use it to pay for people who have not paid into the system, including illegal immigrants. The money stolen from Medicare will also help pay for the $10 billion earmarked to pay for the health care of “retired” union workers, who are between the ages of 55 and 65. Wait! Why should people over 65 have their funds stolen to pay for “retired” union workers, many of whom are healthy and young enough to get another job? Furthermore, since Medicare is already headed for bankruptcy, it is a stupid place from which to take money.
• Medicare Advantage Programs. In particular, Obama, Pelosi and Reid are targeting Medicare Advantage Programs (“MAPs”). Under MAPs, participants generally accept a Health Maintenance Organization (“HMO”) and work through a gateway doctor. HMO’s were first introduced in the 80’s and took off during the 90’s as a method of bringing health care costs down, while promoting healthier participants through regular checkups and prophylactic treatments. One can only surmise that the reason Obama, Pelosi and Reid are targeting these highly successful programs is that MAPs require a private insurance company to participate, whereas Obama, Pelosi and Reid want a Government takeover of our health care system. This attack on MAPs is just another example of people who like their current health plan not being permitted to keep their plan under ObamaCare.
• The Humana Gag Order. When Humana Health Insurance Company sent out letters to its MAP’s participants containing the truth about HR 3200 and the “so-called” Baucus Plan making cuts in their MAP’s programs, Senator Baucus ordered the Obama Administration to threaten legal action and to start an investigation. This was a clear violation of the First Amendment’s protection of Freedom of Speech. These outrageous actions by Baucus and Obama show their willingness to lie and suppress the truth about Obama’s Government Plan and the Baucus Plan.
• Many Employers Will Dump Their Employees into The Government Plan. For many employers, the average cost of employer-sponsored health insurance plans exceeds Obama’s proposed 8% tax on employers who do not provide insurance to their employees. Therefore, once The Government Plan is in effect, many employers will just dump their employees onto The Government Plan to save money. Various studies have estimated that between 80 million and 120 million employees currently covered would lose their employer-sponsored health insurance due to employers availing themselves of this cost savings opportunity, but it would cost the taxpayers trillions of dollars. The people who may be thrown out of their employers’ plans are just another example of people who may not be able to keep their health care plans. ObamaCare was designed to add only 15 million allegedly uninsured persons to coverage at a cost of 0ne trillion dollars in the first 10 years of the Plan and 3 trillion dollars in the second 10 years, even before considering inflation and, worse, Congress’s standard practice of grossly under estimating costs to get programs passed. It is stupid to throw 80 to 120 million people out of insurance to possibly add 15 million, while bankrupting the United States of America. To use Obama’s own words, Obama is “acting stupidly.”
• Obama Wants A Single Payer System. During his campaign Obama is on video tape telling a cheering mob of Obamanites that during his first term he would move the country to a single payer system. After he was elected, Obama is on video tape telling a group from the Service Employees International Union that HR 3200 is only the first step and that it will take years to move the whole country to a single payer system. Therefore, when Obama says that he is not for a single payer system, he is lying.
• Obama’s Tax on Health Care Appears To Be Unconstitutional. The 16th Amendment to the Constitution only permits direct taxes on “incomes.” Other Federal direct taxes are restrained by Article I, Sections 2 and 9, which limit direct taxes to those that are proportioned to the Numbers (or Population) of the States. Not buying health insurance is not ”income,” nor is it a “thing,” so that it cannot be subjected to an excise tax.
• You can learn more and help to stop this plan before it’s too late. Most of the information you need can be found on Dr. Betsy McCaughey’s wonderful website: www.DefendYourHealthCare.us. The full texts of the proposed legislations are there along with loads of other information. Please take action to let your representatives in Washington know that you think the proposed health care plans are not what this country needs to move forward.
• Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll for 9/25-26/09 on Obama’s health care plan: 56% Opposed, 41% Support. Only 16% of seniors support Obama’s health care plan.
• Poll Says 45% of Doctors Said That They Would Consider Quitting If ObamaCare Passes. An IBD/TIPP Poll found that 65% of doctors oppose the Government proposed health care plan and 45% said that they would consider quitting their practice or taking early retirement if it passes. See, Investor’s Business Daily (“IBD”), 9/16/2009, p. 1; search, www.ibdeditorials.com . The poll said that 71% of doctors do not believe that the Government can cover 47 million more people for less money and with better quality of care. There is nothing in any of the plans that will increase the number of doctors to handle the additional people covered. In fact, the Governments proposal will drive doctors out of practice. The biggest thing that will cut cost is tort reform. “Doctors’ Best Medical Cost-Cutting Ideas: Tort Reform, Tort Reform and Tort Reform,” IBD, 9/24/09, p. 1. But the plaintiff lawyers have bought the Democratic Party, so it won’t happen with Democrats in control.
• Obama’s Joint Session of Congress Speech. On September 9th, Obama gave an overly lengthy campaign speech to a Joint Session of Congress on “His” health care plan. However, Obama has not submitted a health care plan. Every time his statements began with “under my Plan,” his statements conflicted with HR 3200 and the other plans floating around Congress. “His Plan” must have been referring to the “Plan” on “His” teleprompter and on video tape. Now, since Obama changes what he says on a regular basis, no one can trust his “Teleprompter Plan.”
• Your Current Plan. Obama has consistently said, “If you like your current health insurance plan, you can keep it. No one will take it away from you.” There are several problems with this oft-repeated statement. Page 16 of HR 3200, says you can only keep your insurance if it was in effect on January 1 of the year in which this law is enacted. Therefore, if you switch jobs, you will not be able to get the insurance of your new employer, because your insurance would not have been in effect on January 1. Nor could you switch between different plans offered by your employer as your circumstances change. In these cases, you would be forced into the Government Plan.
• Medicare. According to HR 3200, Obama, Pelosi and Reid want to cut half a trillion dollars from Medicare. They want to take $500,000,000,000 from people who paid into the system for 30 or 40 years and who need it most, and use it to pay for people who have not paid into the system, including illegal immigrants. The money stolen from Medicare will also help pay for the $10 billion earmarked to pay for the health care of “retired” union workers, who are between the ages of 55 and 65. Wait! Why should people over 65 have their funds stolen to pay for “retired” union workers, many of whom are healthy and young enough to get another job? Furthermore, since Medicare is already headed for bankruptcy, it is a stupid place from which to take money.
• Medicare Advantage Programs. In particular, Obama, Pelosi and Reid are targeting Medicare Advantage Programs (“MAPs”). Under MAPs, participants generally accept a Health Maintenance Organization (“HMO”) and work through a gateway doctor. HMO’s were first introduced in the 80’s and took off during the 90’s as a method of bringing health care costs down, while promoting healthier participants through regular checkups and prophylactic treatments. One can only surmise that the reason Obama, Pelosi and Reid are targeting these highly successful programs is that MAPs require a private insurance company to participate, whereas Obama, Pelosi and Reid want a Government takeover of our health care system. This attack on MAPs is just another example of people who like their current health plan not being permitted to keep their plan under ObamaCare.
• The Humana Gag Order. When Humana Health Insurance Company sent out letters to its MAP’s participants containing the truth about HR 3200 and the “so-called” Baucus Plan making cuts in their MAP’s programs, Senator Baucus ordered the Obama Administration to threaten legal action and to start an investigation. This was a clear violation of the First Amendment’s protection of Freedom of Speech. These outrageous actions by Baucus and Obama show their willingness to lie and suppress the truth about Obama’s Government Plan and the Baucus Plan.
• Many Employers Will Dump Their Employees into The Government Plan. For many employers, the average cost of employer-sponsored health insurance plans exceeds Obama’s proposed 8% tax on employers who do not provide insurance to their employees. Therefore, once The Government Plan is in effect, many employers will just dump their employees onto The Government Plan to save money. Various studies have estimated that between 80 million and 120 million employees currently covered would lose their employer-sponsored health insurance due to employers availing themselves of this cost savings opportunity, but it would cost the taxpayers trillions of dollars. The people who may be thrown out of their employers’ plans are just another example of people who may not be able to keep their health care plans. ObamaCare was designed to add only 15 million allegedly uninsured persons to coverage at a cost of 0ne trillion dollars in the first 10 years of the Plan and 3 trillion dollars in the second 10 years, even before considering inflation and, worse, Congress’s standard practice of grossly under estimating costs to get programs passed. It is stupid to throw 80 to 120 million people out of insurance to possibly add 15 million, while bankrupting the United States of America. To use Obama’s own words, Obama is “acting stupidly.”
• Obama Wants A Single Payer System. During his campaign Obama is on video tape telling a cheering mob of Obamanites that during his first term he would move the country to a single payer system. After he was elected, Obama is on video tape telling a group from the Service Employees International Union that HR 3200 is only the first step and that it will take years to move the whole country to a single payer system. Therefore, when Obama says that he is not for a single payer system, he is lying.
• Obama’s Tax on Health Care Appears To Be Unconstitutional. The 16th Amendment to the Constitution only permits direct taxes on “incomes.” Other Federal direct taxes are restrained by Article I, Sections 2 and 9, which limit direct taxes to those that are proportioned to the Numbers (or Population) of the States. Not buying health insurance is not ”income,” nor is it a “thing,” so that it cannot be subjected to an excise tax.
• You can learn more and help to stop this plan before it’s too late. Most of the information you need can be found on Dr. Betsy McCaughey’s wonderful website: www.DefendYourHealthCare.us. The full texts of the proposed legislations are there along with loads of other information. Please take action to let your representatives in Washington know that you think the proposed health care plans are not what this country needs to move forward.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Obama and the Democrats Lie When they Say Bush and the Republicans Caused the Current Economic Crisis:
Clinton’s Revisions to The Community Reinvestment Act, and his Expansion of Fannie and Freddie’s Low Income Lending Requirements Led to the Subprime Mess
Clinton’s Revisions to The Community Reinvestment Act, and his Expansion of Fannie and Freddie’s Low Income Lending Requirements Led to the Subprime Mess
In the beginning of the Bill Clinton administration, under pressure from Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton had the Democratic-controlled Congress pass amendments to Carter’s 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (the “CRA”). These amendments increased the requirements on banks to make loans into low income neighborhoods and provided for the securitization of mortgages including those to low income persons (“Subprime Mortgages”). Clinton also raised Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s requirements to buy moderate and low income mortgages. See, “How A Clinton-Era Rule Rewrite Made Subprime Crisis Inevitable,” Investor’s Business Daily, 9/25/08, p. 1, www.ibdeditorials.com. To get most of the Subprime Loans that Clinton, ACORN, Obama and other Democrats had forced the banks to make, off the banks’ books, Clinton’s legislation allowed the banks and Wall Street (read Rubin’s friends at Goldman Sachs) to securitize the mortgages in what are called mortgage backed securities (“MBS”). The MBS market was launched immediately and it rapidly turned into a multi-billion dollar market. MBS, including Subprime Mortgages, were sliced and diced and sold to the public, to mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, and hedge funds here and around the world.
Clinton’s idea of multicultural housing policy was to bring housing ownership to low income persons who could not afford to own a home (i.e. “were bad credit risks”) or in some cases they may have been discriminated against because of race or the poor neighborhood in which they lived. The mechanism was to require all Federally Chartered Banks to make loans into poor neighborhoods, and banks that did not meet the requirements of the CRA could be barred from opening branches or merging with other banks, thus limiting their growth prospects. Four government agencies audited the banks to determine their CRA Rating, making the CRA rating more important to the Clinton Administration than the banks’ own credit rating. Community groups, such as ACORN, could bring lawsuits to enjoin proposed mergers, if ACORN or another community group did not think that the banks involved had made enough loans into poor neighborhoods. Obama represented ACORN as an attorney and taught ACORN leaders the intimidation methods that ACORN used to extort banks into making loans to people who couldn’t pay them back. So Obama was very much part of the cause of the Subprime Mess. In fact, his very first act when he became a US Senator was to vote to support the Democratic filibuster that prevented Bush and McCain from improving the controls of Fannie and Freddie.
The CRA sounded like a noble idea to many, and anyone who opposed it was labeled a racist. Investors Daily Business (IBD) has written a series of articles on how the CRA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac led to the subprime mess, starting on September 23, 2008 on page 1 with an article entitled “’Crony’ Capitalism Is Root Cause of Fannie and Freddie Troubles,” search: www.ibdeditorials.com.
After the Republicans took over Congress in 1995, Clinton decided to increase the low and moderate income lending requirements of Fannie and Freddie though administrative agencies, rather than dealing with an uncooperative Republican Congress. In 1995 Clinton ordered his Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin to rewrite the CRA Rules. The rewritten rules increased the numerical quotas and added new measures for “diversity” in the banks’ loan portfolios. Id., “Clinton-Era Rewrite.” After Andrew Cuomo became Clinton’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1997-2001), Clinton got Cuomo to raise the low and moderate income lending requirements of Fannie and Freddie again and to reduce the capital requirements to 2.5% vs. 10% for banks. See, e.g. Id.
The stage was set for Clinton’s appointments of Jim Johnson and Franklin D. Raines, sequentially, as the head of Fannie. There are strong indications that both men played fast and loose with Fannie’s books and took out millions of dollars in compensation. Raines stretched the debt-to-equity of Fannie and failed to write off non-performing mortgages to maximize the value of his bonus and stock options. The Democrats, including Obama, Dodd and Frank, received very large campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie, so that the same Democrats who should have been regulating Fannie and Freddie, instead protected them from all attempts of Bush, McCain and the Republicans to reform Fannie and Freddie.
The Fannie and Freddie total portfolio of mortgages exceeded $5.4 trillion. When the mortgages they insured are also considered, they wound up standing behind approximately 90% of the mortgage market. See, Id. “’Crony’ Capitalism.” After Raines finally left Fannie in 2005, multiple audits kept finding more and more financial problems in Fannie’s financial statements. Fannie was not able to file reasonably clean financial statements until early 2008. Both Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines, who mismanaged Fannie and, if justice were to be served, probably should be in jail, instead have served as economic advisors to Obama. Id.
We now know that Clinton, Rubin, Cuomo, Raines, Obama and the Democrats in Congress are responsible for the failure of Fannie and Freddie and the Subprime Mess that brought the economy down. They are responsible because they voted for the CRA, its revisions, and the Fannie and Freddie amendments and they protected Fannie and Freddie and the Democrats’ cronies who were mismanaging them. Obama is particularly responsible for the massive subprime loans, because he trained ACORN leaders to intimidate banks to make bad loans. Now that you are armed with the facts, when the Democrats shout they the inherited the economic mess from Bush and the Republicans, be sure to call the Democrats the liars that they are.
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